The Island Editorial

Honouring Ven. Sobitha

Saturday 14th November 2015

 

Politicians and others who spoke at Ven. Sobitha Thera’s funeral on Thursday, waxed eloquent, eulogising as they did the late monk. Each one of them paid a glowing tribute to the intrepid activist monk for the role he had played in preserving democracy under successive governments. They were exerting themselves in vain, we thought. People knew Ven. Sobitha well and they braved inclement weather to gather at parliament grounds in their thousands to pay their last respects to him and not to hear politicians speechify.

If defies comprehension why the great monk was cremated near a place which he had held in contempt. He was critical of lawmakers cum lawbreakers sponging off the public. He would certainly have protested if he had known while he was breathing his last where his funeral would take place. The Independence Square would have been the ideal place for his funeral.

The champions of good governance in their funeral orations reiterated the promises they had made before the Jan. 08 presidential election and the Aug. 17 parliamentary polls. In so doing, they admitted that their promises to the people and Ven. Sobitha had not yet been fulfilled.

President Maithripala Sirisena in his speech reiterated his commitment to abolishing the executive presidency. It was to achieve that goal that Ven. Sobitha Thera came forward to lead the joint Opposition’s campaign to dislodge the Rajapaksa government last January. He declared during the presidential election campaign that he would have backed even President Mahinda Rajapaksa if the latter had undertaken to scrap the presidency.

Ven. Sobitha Thera was dejected towards the latter stages of his life because his mission remained unaccomplished, according Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, who had been very close to him. His disappointment had aggravated the deterioration of his health, Dr. Dewasiri has said in an interview with this newspaper.

The venerable Thera believed that for social justice to be achieved the concentration of unbridled power in the hands of a single person had to be stopped. For, power, like narcotics, has a deleterious effect on one’s sanity; causes brain fog as it were and promotes the so-called Jekyll-Hyde behaviour. It is being argued in some quarters that there is nothing wrong with the executive presidency as such and the problem is with the person who holds it. There may be some merit in this argument, but our experience has been that no one should be trusted with too much of power if democracy is to be safeguarded.

We carry an article on Robert Jordan in today’s Satmag section—Finish the book and die. It tells us that Jordan, who passed away leaving some of his works unfinished, expected someone else to finish them after his death and left notes on how that should be done. Likewise, Ven. Sobitha has told the politicians who benefited from his campaign for social justice how to finish his mission. Now it is up to them to go the whole nine yards and do so without trotting out lame excuses.

Let the government start work on writing a new constitution posthaste without pretending to be busy with other issues such as Avant Garde, which has all the trappings of a red herring. That company must be severely dealt with if its operations have been illegal, but there are many other pressing problems which need to be addressed urgently.

Will the government ensure that a project to write a new constitution and change the system of governance gets underway before the third month’s alms-giving in memory of Ven. Sobitha Thera?